Emergency Response
by Ice Cube1
Summary: A young boy held hostage, an agent down, a fire intent on destroying everything in its path – how do the triage rules apply now? No Slash, No Series Spoilers. Set in the same universe as my other story Running the Gauntlet.
1. Dispatch

**Title: Emergency Response**

**Author: Ice Cube**

**Rating: T for language, some violence**

**Spoilers: None for the series and a blink and you'll miss it reference to my story **_**Running the Gauntlet**_**. Definitely isn't necessary to read that one to understand this one, but I'm always up for more readers. This story is in the same universe as that one, and takes place before it.**

**Disclaimer: Right, if I owned them anywhere outside of my dreams, the characters that are forthwith mentioned in this story would be making me a lot of money and very happy…so no, they aren't mine, and I'm a just out of school with no money, so if you're going to sue, feel free, you won't get anything. **

**Characters: Gibbs, DiNozzo, Ducky makes a few guest appearances**

**Archives: Feel free; just let me know where so I can find it again.**

**Summary: A young boy held hostage, an agent down, a fire intent on destroying everything in its path – how do the triage rules apply, now?**

**Warnings: To those who think that I am capable of writing a fic that is torture free…I can't, and thus, if you don't want to see h/c, various possible emotional and/or physical tortures, and other forms of angst, find another story. **

**I don't always have my stories beta'd, I'm too impatient to wait for someone to proof it after I've written it, so I apologize for any mistakes, and if you email me to tell me that they're there, I'll fix them later. **

**Reviews are always a plus; it's great to know that people are reading my stories and that they evoke some strong reactions. Constructive criticism will be taken under advisement. Flames, however, will be treated with the utmost respect they deserve…they will be used as fodder for jokes for years to come.**

**That said, on with the tale…**

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**Chapter 1 – Dispatch**

The bruised and bloody knuckles on both agents should have been the first clue that the ransom drop had gone south. The glare that Gibbs afforded anyone who came even close to getting in his way was the second. DiNozzo's matching black eyes and his own steely gaze completed the puzzle. If it weren't for the handcuffed dock worker being manhandled out of the elevator and towards Interrogation, a number of agents who saw the pair on their way in would have conveniently found excuses to leave the building until things settled down.

It wouldn't have been the first time that the two-man team had caused havoc in the squad room – all in the name of getting their man. It was the reason that, once again, Gibbs was down to only one agent under his command. No one in the Washington office envied the next 'probie' that Morrow would assign TAD to the Major Case Response Team. Many of them still wondered how much longer it would be until DiNozzo was in the Director's office asking for a transfer. The rest of the agents were grumbling behind the Italian's back about the money they'd already lost to the pool betting on how long he'd last.

-NCIS-

When he finally reached Interrogation with the suspect, Gibbs had to hold back from physically throwing the piece of trash standing next to him into the door to open it. As much as he wanted to rip the man limb from limb, he needed the bastard conscious if they were going to get anywhere with him. Right now, he was their only lead as to where the victim had been stashed. And the victim was a far higher priority than Gibbs' own need for vengeance. If the 'guidance' that the dock worker received into the hard metal chair was a little more rough than necessary, Gibbs certainly wasn't going to mention it and the suspect had already figured out that keeping his mouth shut was far more likely to keep him in one piece.

Gibbs stopped Tony halfway through the door to Observation with a gruff, "DiNozzo, get down to Ducky. Have him check you out. I want to hear _from him_ that you're fit to go back out in the field. We're leaving in ten minutes."

Gibbs' voice was steely with a conviction that less than a year of working with the man should still have had Tony tripping over himself to fall into line before he'd realized that he'd done it. The former Homicide detective had never been one to follow along with the expected – as his new colleagues were slowly and begrudgingly figuring out – and Gibbs had been quick to realize that little marvel about the field agent he'd picked up in Baltimore. At the moment, however, Tony was willing to follow the order with nothing more than a token whine if it got Gibbs down to business that much faster. The team leader wasn't the only one itching to get on with their search, but they needed a new direction to search in first.

Tony was halfway down the hall when he paused; something was only now occurring to him about the firm deadline. "But, Gibbs. We don't know where we're going yet."

Gibbs glared and, this time, it was enough to have DiNozzo backtracking. The younger man _was_ still learning how to trust Gibbs' gut and confidence, after all. "Ready to go in ten. On it, Boss."

"And don't forget Ducky." The team leader didn't give his subordinate a second glance as he turned back to the suspect in the small room, smiling inwardly that the bastard was already trembling. There was no hint of a thought in his mind that Tony would do anything other than follow orders and every second they wasted bandying words was another second that they could have been out in the field, finding the missing child.

-NCIS-

"What do you think he's doing in there?" Tony's voice almost cracked as he winced when Ducky prodded at the abused cheekbones. The medical examiner had already cleared him against serious head injury, although DiNozzo had been warned against overly exerting himself until his headache abated. Tony had to bite back a knowing smirk and instead mused silently that _that_ would only happen once Gibbs was able to hand seven-year old Christian Thompson back to his father. Neither of the investigators would settle for anything less – they certainly weren't going to take time off to rest and recuperate. Handfuls of ibuprofen chewed up like _Smarties_, day-old cold pizza, questionably old candy from his desk, 'reappropriated' supplies from the vending machine, and caffeine that might as well be mainlined would have to suffice until Christian was found – one way or another.

Rear Admiral Elliot Thompson had been calling Gibbs' cell phone every hour on the hour for updates – as if either Tony or Gibbs actually needed further motivation to overturn every boulder, pebble, or grain of sand looking for his only son. The mischievous grin and sparkling blue eyes from the school picture attached to his file were forever burned in the young investigator's subconscious – complete with a ticking clock that was reminding him painfully of the odds that were dwindling with every passing moment. Right now it was hard not to imagine that clock looking a lot like the Doomsday clock. And it was ticking entirely too close to midnight for DiNozzo's peace of mind.

Thompson had returned to his home off base to find the door wide open and his son's backpack sitting perched on the threshold. Christian's Summertime Award pin off his Tiger Cub uniform secured a ransom note to the bag. The boy should have been at a pack meeting down the street – the den mother had never seen him. The note had warned Thompson against calling the police or the FBI, and that he would be receiving a call with further instructions soon. The two-star Admiral hadn't wasted time with the local LEO's or the Feds. One call to a poker buddy who just happened to head up NCIS – which was most definitely NOT the cops or FBI – had dispatched the two-man Major Case Response Team to his house ASAP. The two agents had turned the Thompson household upside down looking for clues, had come pretty close to accosting every neighbor on the block and beyond for information, and had pried into the private life of the Admiral, his deceased wife, and both of their families. When nothing had come up there, Gibbs had set Abby on the task of prying into the lives of everyone who had so much as a tie to anyone remotely related to the Thompson family. As much as they wanted to deny it, it was beginning to look like Christian was the victim of a kidnapping of opportunity rather than reason or vengeance.

DiNozzo and Gibbs had been working the case for almost thirty-six hours on nothing but hope, tenacity, and stale leftovers before the ransom call came in. Gibbs had demanded proof of life and the kidnappers relented by putting Christian on the phone – the terrified whimpers of a child calling for his Daddy cutting both investigators to the quick. When they sent Thompson to make the ransom drop twelve hours later, all hell had broken loose. The Admiral had balked at not seeing his son and the kidnappers had forced Gibbs' hand. He and Tony had broken cover to protect the Admiral and hopefully apprehend the two men. Only after what DiNozzo would call a "scrappy" fight with one of the kidnappers – which left him with the two black eyes Ducky was now evaluating – had started to wind down, a well-placed punch to Tony's chin disoriented him enough to give John Delaney the momentary opening he needed to disappear. While DiNozzo was still reeling from the blackness encroaching on his vision, Gibbs had managed to subdue his own assailant and pull his weapon. The shot Gibbs had gotten off had left a blood trail and plenty of DNA evidence, but nothing more. Abby was now running a search on hospital admissions in the area as well as the background checks, but no one was betting on the hope that she'd turn anything up in time. With one angry and injured kidnapper on the loose and inevitably feeling trapped, they were pressed for time to find Christian before Delaney decided to cut his losses.

"What's Gibbs doing where, Anthony?" Ducky had been blissfully tight-lipped since the young ex-cop had silently trudged into Autopsy and hopped up onto the exam table without even a gesture of protest, a movie reference, or a sarcastic quip. The guilt at letting Delaney go was written more plainly on his face than the physical pain from the bruises he was far more adept at hiding. He couldn't have handled any of Ducky's diatribes at the moment without losing it.

"In Interrogation. Usually, he at least lets me watch." Tony turned his head away from Ducky's continued prodding and moved to stand up – whether or not the older man was finished.

"Anthony, you know that Jethro…"

"I'm not saying he's doing some Vulcan death grip or anything like that. Just that maybe he's trying something other than 'hardass Marine'?" Tony moved to the door. "I need to get the car. Can you let him know I'm good to go?"

"Anthony, this is hitting…"

"It's hitting us all hard, Ducky." Tony paused as if warring with himself over something. When he spoke, his tone was hesitant and sounded impossibly young to be coming from him – as if he shouldn't be asking what he was going to. "You don't know if Gibbs had kids, do you?"

"No. He never had children with any of his three wives. Never seemed to want any."

Tony looked puzzled for a moment before he nodded and sighed. "Call him, will you?"

He left without another word.

-NCIS-

DiNozzo beat Gibbs down to the motor pool by a full thirty seconds and had just opened the driver's side door when he heard the team lead clear his throat behind him.

"Just…just getting it warmed up for you, Boss." Tony looked sheepish as he handed over the keys and slumped into the passenger's seat.

He had barely grabbed onto the seatbelt buckle when the squeal of tires and the rush of inertia had him scrambling to keep his seat. Tony had to quell the rising feeling of nausea as he concentrated on the horizon and reminded himself that time was most certainly of the essence.

Christian's pleas for his Daddy to come and save him from the "mean men" were still echoing accusingly through Tony's mind. He idly wondered what his own father would have done if he'd ever been kidnapped. It wasn't like there wasn't ample opportunity for it to have happened. Anthony DiNozzo, Sr. wasn't exactly the poster boy for knowing the location of his offspring, even before the loss of his wife. He'd never made it a secret to his immediate family that his business was far higher on his list of priorities than a boy who shared his name.

Gibbs, on the other hand…well, DiNozzo could almost see what would happen if someone had dared to kidnap _his_ child. He wondered if anyone in the world would be insane enough to try. Just looking at the man on his best days screamed retribution, hardass Marine, and pit bull with a bone – all rolled into one. Admiral Thompson may have the rank and the influence to do his best by Christian, but Tony was pretty sure that if this were Gibbs' own flesh and blood…well, no red tape, regulations, or priorities would get in his way.

-NCIS-

The sight of the old warehouse they were rapidly approaching sent an intense shiver down DiNozzo's spine. The building looked like it was ready to collapse in on itself at any moment – without warning. Images of being trapped and buried alive gripped him momentarily, and the detective had to will himself to focus on the more droll aspects of the impending operation. The sheer size of the structure promised for long hours of searching empty rooms and finding who knows what in the darkness. Tony could imagine Abby having a field day testing for paranormal activity, but to him it spelled long hours of dust, pent-up adrenaline, and – best case scenario – a small boy who was frightened, but otherwise unharmed.

If there was one thing the former Homicide detective had figured out on the Force, it was that looking to the best case scenario was far easier to cope with than wondering about the what-if's. He could be realistic with the best of them and could readily tell others the likelihood of the best case scenario actually coming to pass. But if he was already assuming Christian to be dead, then there was nothing to look forward to other than body recovery and that made the hours spent searching for him that much more arduous and emotionally taxing. No one needed that much weighing down on them – not if they expected to make a lifelong career out of cases like this.

It wasn't that he didn't know the statistics. Christian had already been missing for more than forty-eight hours and that spelled out a grim conclusion. Despite what most of his former supervisors thought, DiNozzo was as serious about excelling at this job as he had been about understanding playbooks, offensive and defensive strategy, and game theory in college ball. He knew that the fiasco that he had caused earlier in the day had likely sealed Christian's fate and that they probably _were_ on a body recovery rather than a hostage rescue. It wouldn't be the first time he had been a part of a less than fairytale ending, and he was absolutely sure it wouldn't be the last time either. He'd been in too many cities and worked Homicide for too long to have any naïvety left to think that just because Christian was only seven, he couldn't be dead. He'd seen mutilated corpses far younger than the Admiral's son.

Images of all the tiny faces frozen in their last moments that he hadn't been in time to save were burned in his memory, hidden deeply in his subconscious – far deeper even than the scars his father had left behind. Those faces were all the more reason to focus on what hope he could find – hope that Christian wouldn't be yet another permanent guest in that lockbox of memories. As another option, banking on optimism might just keep him focused on the task at hand and distracted from thinking about what happened earlier. The fight at the docks was playing over and over in his head along with the odds and the clock, convincing the young man more and more that the little boy's death would be his fault.

"DiNozzo! You coming, or are you going to sit on your ass all day?" Caught up in his self-flagellation, Tony hadn't even realized that the car had stopped until a hands-free radio was dropped in his lap and the echo of the driver-side car door slamming shut reverberated in his ears.

Despite knowing how much time was of the essence, and despite willing himself to jump out of the car more quickly than he could get his seatbelt off, Tony found that he had to fumble for more than a few seconds before he managed to extricate himself from the vehicle. By this time, Gibbs had made it more than halfway across the vacant parking lot without looking back once. The younger investigator had to sprint to catch up with him.

"Glad you could join the party, DiNozzo." The voice was harsh on his ears and Tony had to subconsciously remind himself not to visibly flinch. He did have a feeling, though, that one of his smartass remarks would not be welcome and simply adjusted the earpiece before flicking the switch on the radio itself. He grimaced as the feedback squealed and instinctively jerked his head away before realizing the futility of that.

Tony thought he caught a glimpse of a smirk from his boss before the task at hand crashed back down on both of them. The severity of their search had them once again concentrating solely on approaching the warehouse as stealthily as possible. There was no telling if they'd beaten Delaney here, and it wouldn't do Christian any good if they were picked off by pot shots before even getting in the front door.

"Clear the first floor then split." Gibbs' voice was so quiet that DiNozzo couldn't actually tell if he'd heard it in his earpiece or from the man's mouth. The young investigator simply nodded and started clearing corners and any place small enough to hide a body. The open floor plan made it a quick and efficient task. He was on his way up the stairs before he remembered how big the warehouse had seemed from the outside.

"Why do I always get the stairs?" DiNozzo really hoped that Gibbs hadn't heard that over the radio.

-NCIS-

Gibbs smirked at Tony's complaint but wasn't about to dignify it with a response. The voice-activated radios were an asset in situations like this where agents simply couldn't spare a hand for the "push-to-talk" button, but it was easy to forget just how sensitive they were.

The silence of the basement was oppressive, but thankfully most of the windows had long ago been broken, so plenty of light filtered in. Whatever had been stored down here when the building was still in operation had been sold off or scrapped, and it was these small favors that made a search of this magnitude more palatable.

Gibbs had been through enough search and rescue operations in his career to have an idea about how long this was going to take. The word of one soon-to-be convicted felon wasn't enough to warrant a full call-out without waiting for some kind of paper trail or jumping through several hoops – at least it wasn't when the time it would take to muster up a full contingent of agents could easily mean Christian's time would run out. Gibbs had made a call to the Director en route, asking for a team of agents to be put on stand-by. Backup was being called together by Morrow as the MCRT began the search, but Gibbs and Tony hadn't been willing to wait. As he'd driven up to the warehouse, however, Gibbs had started to have second thoughts. Trying to find one boy and his captor in a warehouse of this size was not unlike trying to find a needle in a haystack; especially considering that Delaney had most likely scouted out the building in order to find a readily defensible position.

It hadn't been hard to discover that the basement level of the building had no place to contain a child and had been cleared in a matter of minutes. He was on his way up to the second floor when he smelled it. Beneath the stench of mold and who knows what else, there was the acrid hint of smoke. Somewhere in the building, something was burning.

"Hey Boss, you smell that, too?" DiNozzo's voice rang out in Gibbs' ear for the first time and caused him to flinch much like Tony had earlier.

"Son of a…that better not be you laughing, DiNozzo," Gibbs grumbled as he adjusted the volume on his headset. Now that he was concentrating on singling out the stench, there was no doubt a fire had broken out somewhere. He couldn't see any smoke on his floor, so it had to be somewhere above him.

The smell brought back memories that he couldn't afford right now. Sunshine and daisies and a little girl's voice pleading with him not to go away again mixed with his spotty memory of just after his CO had broken the news. It actually brought Gibbs to a standstill until he could picture Christian, hear his cries for _his_ Daddy, and think about the phone call he was sure to be getting within the hour from a frantic father. His resolve steeled once more, and Kelly and Shannon placed lovingly, but firmly, back into the corner of his heart that was untouched by anyone else, the lead agent was able to start clearing rooms efficiently.

"Look sharp, DiNozzo. The fire's somewhere between you and me; we don't want to be in here any longer than necessary. No telling what's been forgotten in here that could go up." Gibbs cleared yet another room on the floor, hoping that the boy was here as well, below the smoke and inevitable flames.

"Fifth floor is clear, Gibbs. I'm moving down to the fourth now." Tony's voice faded out and Gibbs went back to his own task. Pausing in a storage room that had long ago been emptied of its contents, he pulled his cell. While he had originally had little problem spending the extra time looking for the boy while backup took its sweet time getting there, the added danger of the fire accomplished two things. It proved – at least enough to justify the man-hours – that there was credence to this being Christian's location. It also made time a precious commodity. The scowl on his face when Dispatch informed him of the ETA for first responders was quickly growing as he looked down the hall, seeing just how many doors there still were on the floor.

The squeal that echoed in Gibbs' ear startled him, but was quickly replaced with Tony muttering – clearly to himself, "I'm okay. Stupid rat thinks I'm a scratching post or something. This is not the Titanic, and I'm pretty sure even DiCaprio would realize that I am _not_ a life raft."

"Backup's on the way, DiNozzo. Any sign of the fire on Four?" Ignoring the non-sequitur, Gibbs shook his head and wondered, not for the first time, if uncalled for humor was one of Tony's many masks or if it truly was the young man's only real coping mechanism.

-NCIS-

Tony took a deep, steadying breath as he watched the rat scurrying away from where he'd kicked it clear across the room. The rodent had come screeching out of the boxes DiNozzo had upended and straight up his pant leg. Even now, he still thought he could feel the little claws latching onto his skin. He almost missed Gibbs' question.

As he peered out of the office he'd been clearing, DiNozzo noticed how much thicker the smoke had gotten in the last few minutes. He hadn't seen any flames yet, but knew it was only a matter of time. The ambient temperature had increased several degrees already, and the air was getting harder and harder to breathe. DiNozzo had seen a few victims of arson on a case in Peoria; it was one of the top ways he did _not_ want to go out. 'A blaze of glory' was all well and good, but only when it was in the figurative case.

"DiNozzo, report." Gibbs voice sounded unusually tiny through the earpiece now that he'd turned the volume down, and Tony almost let out a snicker before the gravity of the situation rained down on him again. Now was not the time for his sense of humor to rear its head. He rattled off a status report as he'd been trained to do long ago without letting it really filter through his concentration. The smoke was starting to make his eyes water, and it was all he could do to not imagine being trapped up here if the fire cut him off.

Each door he'd opened so far on this floor had been more of the same. Empty storage rooms and converted offices covered in so much dust that he was pretty sure no one had set foot in them since before the storage company went out of business. Someone had clearly been up here recently – the hallway had tracks through the dust that overlapped each other. Without a clear trail to follow, however, he swept each room carefully. Tony had just started to become used to the silence when he heard it. Something was scuffling behind the door he was just about to check. Checking his gun, DiNozzo whispered into his mike.

"There's definitely something more than rats up here, Boss." Tony reached for the handle on the door, more suspicious when he found it locked. He tried the handle once more before putting his shoulder to the wood. It didn't give on the first try, but he could more clearly hear someone on the other side.

"Someone's definitely banging around in office number…" DiNozzo didn't have a chance to finish the sentence as the door opened suddenly and a two by four swung for his head through the opening. The impact sent him reeling as the room started to spin wildly out of control. Tony hadn't even had the chance to train his gun on Delaney when searing numbness lanced through his now seemingly nerveless fingers and he heard the distinct clatter of his weapon sliding across the floor. He tried to make some sort of sound to alert Gibbs to the situation, but he realized with a detached sense of his surroundings that the headset to his radio had just crunched under his foot. Blood was dripping down the side of his face as he spun out of the way of the lumber.

DiNozzo had to blink several times to get enough focus to keep from falling over. If he thought he'd had a headache before, it was nothing compared to the throbbing that was now trying to take over the hold he had on consciousness. Spots of light flashed before his eyes and sent him stumbling back towards the wall, trying to angle his path back to his gun. Instead, he had to throw himself out of the way of Delaney's swing once again. Tony knew he needed to get enough space so he could get hold of his service weapon and hopefully take control of the situation. It seemed that time was running away from him as it had been since the fight on the docks had started the countdown to Christian's life.

Abandoning his gun for the more immediate threat, Tony tackled Delaney in an effort to bring this dance back to his lead. The two traded punches, but it was clear that the concussion severely hampered DiNozzo's fighting style, and he quickly started losing ground again. It was when he was stumbling through the door that he'd been trying to get through only minutes ago that he heard it. Choked sniffles caught Tony's ear and distracted him enough to turn his head. The petrified blond-haired boy tied to a chair in the center of the room was the last thing he saw before the world exploded in a flash of white pain and then Tony knew nothing more.

-NCIS-

Gibbs had been pretty sure that he'd more than winged Delaney as he'd been escaping from the docks which would have delayed the man getting back to the warehouse. The fire springing up the way that it had, however, led credence to a gut feeling that the kidnapper was around. Gibbs thought briefly about the risk of continuing the search in the fire before soundly ignoring his ever-dwindling sense of self-preservation and pushing onward. There was a little boy lost somewhere in here – not to mention his partner searching up on the floors above him – so it wasn't really a choice Gibbs had to think about.

"DiNozzo, report." Annoyance tinged his voice when he had to call for the young man again. He'd expected a prompt response to whether or not the fire was on the floor Tony was searching. It was unlike the younger man not to answer at first call – even if it took him a minute to actually get around to answering Gibbs' question. Regardless, Gibbs needed a status report on the younger man's whereabouts in case the fire found any type of accelerant left over from the warehouse's days in use.

Tony's voice finally crackled through the radio. "I'm about halfway through the fourth floor, Gibbs. Most of the rooms are empty of anything but rats and cardboard boxes. There's been a couple of offices, but no sign that anyone's been in them."

Gibbs nodded even though his partner couldn't see it and reported back the same. He was about to ask for the unanswered status update on the fire when DiNozzo cut him off.

"There's definitely something more than rats up here, Boss." Tony's voice was muffled by the static and Gibbs had to strain to hear the quiet words. "Someone's definitely banging around in office number…"

Gibbs blanched as Tony's voice was cut off abruptly and all that was left over the frequency was dead air.

"Repeat, DiNozzo." Gibbs held his breath, hoping that Tony had simply gone radio silent as he worked to open the door. It wasn't the first time that the younger man had trailed off mid-sentence to concentrate on something more pressing, but it unnerved Gibbs now more than usual. If there was one thing that could be said about DiNozzo, it was that the man could chatter away incessantly about nothing – like he just wanted someone to realize that he was there. He counted slowly to thirty in his head before he started to admit that something was seriously wrong.

"Sit-rep, Tony."

He waited another quick fifteen seconds before he tried again.

"Tony, answer me."

The tone of his voice brooked no delay, but he was met with no response.

"That's an order, DiNozzo."

Gibbs' growl echoed down the abandoned hallway as his voice rose in anger and concern.

"DiNOZZO. Now."

Concern won out and resonated deep in his chest; something was seriously wrong.

"Tony?"

The only response to his plea was continued silence.

**-TBC-**


	2. Search and Rescue

**Sorry, everyone. I meant to upload this chapter yesterday, but was at an all-day hockey tournament and by the time I got home, I was beat - and beat up. Thanks to everyone who reviewed, favorited, or followed this story!**

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**Chapter 2 – Search and Rescue **

"Tony, damn it, answer me." Gibbs' voice held an air of desperation to it that he hadn't expected. He had long prided himself on the ability to remain emotionally detached and in control – it had saved his life and others' more than once. What was it about the young man on the other end of the radio that had that stoicism going up in smoke? Cursing the distance between his current position and his agent's last known whereabouts, Gibbs gave up on getting a response over the radio and stepped through the door to the stairwell, taking the stairs two at a time. He fleetingly thought about the possibility of Christian being in one of the unsearched rooms on the third floor, but the more immediate threat appeared to be to DiNozzo on the fourth floor. If the young agent was simply off-comm, Gibbs would just have to kill him later.

It wasn't the first time in the past year that Gibbs had found himself searching for his missing agent, and he had a bad feeling that it certainly wouldn't be the last. The young man had a proclivity for attracting trouble like the plague, and tying that to both his tenacious attitude and insatiable desire to put the puzzle together made for an excellent – yet dangerous – combination in their line of work. The young investigator had great instincts and a genuine need to help others – traits that Gibbs both shared and had looked for when Morrow had "encouraged" him to find a more permanent partner than an endless string of probies. It had been far too long since Franks had quit – retired to Mexico, rather – leaving Gibbs with the responsibility of their field office and a couple probies. Gibbs had been reassigned several times since then, but too much had happened and too many bridges had been burned. Mike had left, Jenny had ended things, and even Burley had transferred; Gibbs was hesitant to open himself up to disappointment yet again. His strings of ex-wives and transferred agents were silent proof that once you lost something innately good, it wasn't easy to find a new path.

Since dragging DiNozzo out of Baltimore, Gibbs had started to think that maybe –just maybe – he had found someone he could call partner once again. At first glance, DiNozzo seemed to be black to his white – yin to his yang if you believed in that newfangled nonsense. The two of them seemed to more closely resemble oil and water or cats and dogs than a complimentary pair of agents. DiNozzo would probably make a comparison between Hannibal and Face – not that Gibbs would admit to understanding the reference to _The A-Team_. Several of his colleagues had mentioned the stark differences or would have been more likely to compare DiNozzo to Murdock if any of them had cared to take a page out of Tony's book. Gibbs paid them little mind. The lead agent was well aware that DiNozzo had his masks, but if Pacci and the others couldn't see past them, then maybe they weren't the investigators that they thought they were. There was a reason DiNozzo was assigned to MCRT and they weren't, after all – and it wasn't just his ability to brush off the Marine's gruff attitude and less than gentle head slaps.

Gibbs steered his thoughts resolutely away from why exactly it was that Tony put up with his callous attitude. There wasn't time to muse on why DiNozzo responded better to glares, harsh words, and being smacked upside the head. Before the young man had come into his life, the former Marine had used his unflinching and abrasive character traits on an everyday basis to ward off anyone from getting too close. One side trip to Baltimore for a case had turned _that_ right on its head. Rather than Tony taking the hint and keeping his distance from the wounded bear persona that protected the walls of Gibbs' psyche, the younger man had simply wormed his way inside, put his feet up on the furniture, and accepted that it was all part of the package labeled "Gibbs". Not even Steve – no, Stan – Burley had attempted that in the five years he had survived under the Marine's tutelage.

None of that made the agent feel any better about the fact that Tony wasn't answering his radio in the middle of a fire with Delaney on the loose. The fugitive was clearly backed into a corner, and wounded animals had a way of becoming even more dangerous. There was no one but Gibbs to find DiNozzo, and time was ticking down quickly.

Gibbs supposed that he could have waited for the warrant Morrow was expediting, the back-up that said Director had suggested, and the concrete proof that Delaney had indeed come back to the warehouse. It would have meant that he could have had DiNozzo's six, and he wouldn't be spending time searching for the young Italian and avoiding the spiraling thoughts that wondered if he was looking for two bodies now instead of one. He could have had a contingent of probies, local LEO's, and probably a handful of Fornell's associates at his beck and call. They would have strategically searched the entire warehouse and probably would have found Christian – and likely also Delaney – in half the time it was going to take the two-man team to search the building even without this setback.

The delay had settled wrong in Gibbs' gut – not that patience was high on his list of virtues in the first place. The two-man team might be as close to running on fumes as they could manage, but the simple knowledge that they were sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for some legal weenie to justify searching for Christian while the boy was waiting for someone to rescue him would have been devastating. Neither of the men would have been able to justify taking the time to secure back-up for their own well-being and it was part of what made them work together as well as they did. The fact that Gibbs understood this about both himself and Tony had easily justified the risk they were now facing, and there had never really been any choice other than to come to the warehouse on their own.

None of that made the "what-ifs" stop running through Gibbs' head now that his partner had stopped responding to his calls.

The decision to split up had been his immediate instinct, and he knew it had been the right call at the time. The warehouse was simply too big; the possibility that Christian wasn't even here was too great; and either way, the danger to the boy was too time-sensitive to worry about watching each other's six. It was a decision that he couldn't regret, but it didn't stop him from trying to juggle alternatives.

None of that mattered as Gibbs studiously ignored the twinge in his knee and blew past the door to the third floor. Once he found Tony, they'd regroup and try to find Christian in the remaining rooms. By that time, hopefully, he'd have a team of agents to go room by room far more quickly than he and Tony had managed so far. Morrow's dislike of Gibbs' lone wolf routine was starting to make sense in the senior agent's mind as he turned to the last flight of stairs between Tony's last known location and Gibbs' current one.

Caught up in his own need to get up the stairs as quickly as possible, Gibbs wasn't aware that he had crashed backwards against the wall until the fist that was aimed at his nose was too close to do more than deflect to his cheek. The stars that flashed through his vision were something of a surprise, but he didn't have the luxury of worrying about it at the moment. Before he could shake his head to clear his vision, arms had wrapped around his waist and the Marine was reacting on base instinct ingrained years ago by drill instructors at boot camp. Using Delaney's momentum against him, Gibbs continued to spin and loosened his opponent's grip as the man's head connected with the wall.

The stairwell wasn't an ideal place to fight as it was enclosed and had too many inherent dangers, but those could work for him as well as against him and Gibbs would take any advantage he could get at the moment. As much as he wanted to slowly exact revenge for whatever this bastard had done to the kidnapped boy and his own missing agent, Tony and Christian didn't have time for a long drawn-out battle. Gibbs reached for his gun, wishing that he hadn't holstered it on his way up the stairs.

Delaney clearly had training in hand-to-hand combat and was also cognizant enough to realize that allowing a gun into a federal agent's hand was not high on his list of good ideas. Gibbs had already shot him once; there weren't too many people in the world who wanted to repeat that experience. Before the gun was fully out of its holster, the fugitive made a suicide dive for it; he put himself in close range of his opponent's fist, but also managed to send the weapon clattering down the stairs.

Gibbs bit back a curse even as he recovered and slammed his other hand down on the back of Delaney's neck with enough force to send the man to his knees. The longer this took, the less time DiNozzo and Christian had, and despite Gibbs' need for justice, they were his priority. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that if Delaney simply stumbled down the stairs then Gibbs would let him go. Leads could be chased later and the bastard would eventually be caught; the man's victims didn't have the same open-ended time frame.

Gibbs turned to deliver a kick to the man's midsection with the intent of stunning Delaney long enough to wrap calloused hands around his neck and end this once and for all. He underestimated how quickly his opponent would recover, however, and didn't expect to be upended when Delaney grabbed onto his ankle and shoved. For the second time in as many minutes, Gibbs' skull echoed with the effects of meeting the wall up close.

Not giving him a chance to recover, Delaney pounced on the agent and drove him flat on his back. Gibbs crashed backwards into the staircase above them, groaning as his back impacted against the steps. Kneeling astride Gibbs' chest, the fugitive fought for his freedom as he tried to bat away flailing fists and find purchase on the older man's neck.

Gibbs wasn't about to let _that_ happen. He hadn't spent the last year sparring with DiNozzo without learning how to counter against a scrappier fighter. All he needed was some leverage in order to flip the man, but it took longer than the agent would like. A few lucky blows rained down on his face before Gibbs saw an opening. He had to let Delaney secure a chokehold, but managed a deep enough breath before hands started to squeeze so that even before his vision could start to grey out, he had levered the man off-balance using his own locked arms against him. Delaney hit the wall but managed to keep his feet as Gibbs stood to his own. The two threw themselves at each other and met in the middle with a flurry of punches that would have made lesser men cower in fear.

It was clear that both men were tiring, but neither could afford to let the other get the upper hand. For Delaney to let down his guard, it would spell the end of his days of freedom – and likely his life if he got sloppy. For Gibbs, it would not only end assuredly with his death, but losing this fight would also sign DiNozzo and Christian's death warrants. Neither man had anything to lose.

Blood trailed from Delaney's shoulder as the bullet wound he had hastily tried to treat opened again amidst the abuse the man was suffering. Not one to condone fighting dirty, Gibbs was still going to press every advantage he could find and focused his attack on the man's weaker side. The agent bided his time, forcing Delaney to consistently extend his wounded arm in order to ward off Gibbs' blows. He could see tremors wracking the fugitive's muscles and pushed the man to surpass his limits. When he finally had an opening, Gibbs rushed forward, opening his hand at the last minute and jabbing his thumb deep into the bullet wound.

Delaney's primal scream of pain would have been enough to wake the dead. Unfortunately for Gibbs, instead of weakening him, the fiery pain served as an adrenaline rush and the agent found himself propelled backwards and almost off his feet as Delaney grabbed him around the throat and bent him backwards over the railing.

Gibbs unconsciously wound his foot around one of the upright posts that held up the rail, holding on for all he was worth even as he tried to choke in some oxygen. His strength was rapidly failing, and he needed to end this sooner rather than later. Calling on whatever reserves he could find, Gibbs fought his way back to standing and once more angled Delaney back to the wall behind him. He intended to put the man's head through the wall if he had to, but he didn't intend for Delaney to get his foot up in the agent's midsection and kick with all he had left.

The momentum from Delaney's foot sent Gibbs backwards a few paces, but it was enough. The last step came down too far back on the landing and the former Marine didn't have enough left in him to keep his balance. A momentary glimpse of what weightlessness felt like was quickly erased by the pain of body parts impacting with a full flight of stairs.

All Gibbs could do was let himself go limp and roll with the fall, trying to protect his head on the way down. When he came to a rest on the third floor landing, Gibbs wasn't entirely sure he could actually get up again.

Delaney wasn't about to let him take the time to recover. Gibbs could hear him pounding down the stairs, intent on killing the agent without remorse. The former Marine remained on his stomach, waiting for the kidnapper to get close enough. When Delaney reached the last stair, Gibbs didn't hesitate to pull the gun he'd thankfully landed on and pump half a clip of bullets into the bastard's chest, watching in grim determination as the man's blood spilled from his body.

With Delaney dead at his feet, Gibbs allowed himself a split second to breathe and push the aches and sharp pains back into the box in his subconscious clearly labeled "Don't Touch". The agent pulled himself to his feet and stumbled up the flight of stairs painfully. He had to get to DiNozzo and Christian, and he had to do it now.

As he finally wrenched open the door to the fourth floor, Gibbs was taken aback at the sheer heat that blasted out at him. The difference in temperature that the simple act of opening the door had effected hammered home with absolute certainty that there wasn't much time left. He had to finish this and get everyone out. Now.

Doors that were already open were disregarded. With the added light from the flames, Gibbs could see footsteps in the dust at his feet. Delaney's quick strides were ignored in favor of the slightly smaller and closer together footprints that likely belonged to DiNozzo. Gibbs' missing agent clearly started on this side of the floor and would have cleared these rooms already.

His gun at the ready – Gibbs couldn't afford any more surprises or delays – the agent carefully made his way down the corridor, torn between calling out for DiNozzo and not wanting to give any possible accomplices the heads' up that he was coming. "Shoot first, ask questions later" was the only way to go at this point, and Gibbs wasn't going to risk that he would be the one on the receiving end of a bullet. The eerie feeling he got from walking headlong into a fire already had him on edge, his senses on high alert for anything that would give him a clue.

Gibbs stopped dead in his tracks when a sound that didn't belong in a fire breezed past his ears. He hardly dared to breathe until he heard the child's crying again and took off at a dead sprint. He might not know where DiNozzo was or how he was faring, but his own conscience – as well as the budding knowledge of what made his agent tick – had him putting that thought out of his mind almost before he'd had it. Neither of them would be able to forgive themselves if Christian didn't make it out of this fire alive. The loss of a seven-year old – a child, an innocent – was unacceptable no matter what the situation, and the conclusion that he needed to find the boy first wasn't even a conscious decision.

Of course, DiNozzo could have already found the kid. The young man was notoriously awful with children, after all. Just because Gibbs could still hear Christian crying didn't mean that he wouldn't find both of his charges together. The boy could simply be just as frightened of the ex-cop as he had indubitably been of his captors, and Tony had no idea how to calm Christian down. The lead agent had no real way of knowing his subordinate's status.

Gibbs hadn't heard from his partner since the radio went dead. But there could be a million reasons for that. Neither agent got along well with technology, not on their best days. Tony could be focused completely on Christian – there was no telling what condition the boy was in and DiNozzo's attention span was mercurial some days even when it was hyper-aware on others. Either way, the young man may have lost sense of anything other than what was directly in front of his nose. The old building could be interfering with the frequencies, or the signals, or some other nonsense that Abby would rattle off. DiNozzo's radio could simply be broken, or the battery could have died. Tony's continued silence wasn't necessarily tied into Delaney's hurried exit from the floor DiNozzo was last on. Gibbs growled. Coincidences had no place in Gibbs' reality, and he wasn't going to start believing in them now. The former Marine had never been an optimist in the face of reality and today's events hadn't done anything to change that. He needed to get to Christian and find his agent, and he needed to do it fast.

Gibbs had almost run past the door in his haste to find the source of the cries. He skidded to a stop and grabbed for the door handle both to steady himself against the twinge in his knee and to expedite getting to Christian. The ease with which the knob turned surprised Gibbs, which made the lack of movement from the heavy door all the more unexpected. He had to put all of his weight into the door just to get it to slide open enough to train his gun through the opening. When no one fired back at him and the sound of muffled sobs became more pronounced, Gibbs shoved the door open as far as it would go. His trained eyes took in the state of the room and whatever had been blocking the door skittered out of his train of thought as he finally caught sight of the source of the cries.

The towheaded boy looked startlingly like his father, down to the bright blue eyes that locked on Gibbs through the crocodile tears. Despite the mottled bruising and the soot that obscured some of the boy's features, there was no doubt that this was Christian Thompson. His split lower lip trembled around the dirty bandana that kept him from crying out and Gibbs would have had to be legally blind to miss the tremors of fear that wracked the child's frame. The little boy wasn't entirely sure what to make of this new player in his captor's game, and he wasn't going to give over his trust easily – that much Gibbs could read in the wary gaze. There was something innately wrong with a boy so small having that much suspicion, but Delaney had torn down the curtain of illusion so thoroughly in the past couple of days that Christian would likely never regain the level of innocence he'd had at the beginning of this whole mess. If the bastard wasn't already dead, Gibbs would have killed him again – far more painfully this time.

Gibbs' trained eyes surveyed the room quickly before he holstered his weapon and made his way slowly to the center of the room. The flames were already starting to lick at the walls in here, working their way through the door frame at the back of the room. Time was getting short, and he still had no idea what Delaney had done with DiNozzo. It was the scraping of the chair legs that drew his attention back to the matter at hand, and he was surprised to see Christian's scuffed sneakers toeing the ground and scooting him and his chair – rather ineffectively – away from Gibbs.

"Hey, quit that." Gibbs' gruff tone did two things very effectively. It stopped the boy from almost knocking himself over and likely adding injury to whatever he had already sustained from Delaney. But it also sent the boy into uncontrolled hysterics and Gibbs had to mentally smack himself upside the head as he remembered that this was an already petrified seven-year old boy and not his wayward partner.

Dredging up long-buried instincts, Gibbs forced himself to concentrate on the boy and block out everything else. The fire could wait. DiNozzo would keep. Christian was the priority and he wasn't going anywhere with Gibbs unless the kid trusted him. They hadn't gotten off to a very good start.

"Christian…Chris, it's all right. I'm a friend of your Daddy's." The tone was impossibly soft, but the boy still looked at him as though he were the enemy – and Gibbs was pretty sure that the men he'd taken out overseas hadn't looked at him quite so fiercely, when they could see him that was. He had to wonder if Delaney had tried the same platitudes to get the boy to trust him.

"He told me that you were bugging him the other morning about getting a puppy. You wanted a big old Siberian husky and you promised you'd walk him every day after school, right?" Gibbs carefully took a step closer and was rewarded with a slight nod. Christian's shoulders lowered a little bit and his eyes tracked the movement of the adult's hand as it reached behind his head. The cloth that had chafed at the boy's mouth slowly peeled away and the older man knelt at Christian's side, still talking about the puppy that the boy wanted.

Gibbs shook out the gag and wrapped it around the lower half of Christian's face – doing what it could to protect his mouth and nose and filter out some of the smoke. He took a second to let long-dormant fatherly instincts take over and carded his fingers through the soft hair. It did what was intended and calmed some of the tremors.

"Keep that over your mouth. Okay, Bud?"

"Like cops…and robbers?" The tiny voice was hesitant and rough from either screaming or the smoke – Gibbs wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know which. He smiled to hopefully ease some more of Christian's fears before responding to the question.

"Just like cops and robbers. In fact, I'm looking for a cop that might have come in here. Have you seen him?" The little boy nodded as he tried to clamp down on the tears that were flowing freely down his face. From the determined effort to stop crying, the senior agent could imagine that lectures from the straight-laced Admiral were running through Christian's mind – lectures about the usefulness of tears and how real men didn't cry. The Marine had never subscribed to that ideology – especially not to teaching that to the innocent, but it wasn't his child in front of him.

Gibbs reached into his back pocket and pulled out the small hunting knife that was a familiar comfort in his hand. As the blade clicked open, the agent realized his mistake when Christian squealed and began sobbing in earnest once more. The light from the flames licking at the walls bounced off the polished metal and flashed in the boy's already panicked eyes. Unknown hours of terror with his captors had put the boy on edge, and the sight of the sharpened steel so close to him sent him babbling over and over.

"No, please. Please, sir, I'll be good. I promise. Please, don't hurt me. Please." The shrill tone cut at Gibbs' ears just as thoroughly as the words themselves cut at his character. He didn't have the time to stop and abate the boy's fears, but kept up a constant string of soothing words as he slowly reached for the bindings around Christian's ankles. His calm movements and the feeling of one of his feet coming free from the chair leg slowed the tirade.

When the words tumbling from the boy's lips finally stopped, Gibbs paused momentarily and locked eyes with him.

"I'm going to get you out of here, son, but I need to find my agent, too. He was looking for you, too. Did he come in here?" Gibbs' tone was impossibly gentle.

Christian nodded, but didn't continue, still staring at the camouflaged blade as Gibbs moved to cut away the bond at his wrist.

"Christian, what did you see?"

"Mr. Delaney...he was...and then he...and then there was a noise...and then..." Christian sobbed again and ran his free hand across his nose, pushing the bandana down as he did so. The boy stared, transfixed, at the blood that glistened on the back of his hand. His whole body shook with a violent tremor as his eyes met Gibbs'.

"I want my Daddy."

Gibbs spared a brief moment to thumb away the boy's tears before retying the bandana and hacking away at the ropes again. "He wants to see you too, Bud. We'll get you to him as soon as we can, all right? Did you see my partner?"

Christian nodded and sniffled again. He bit his lip before stuttering through his explanation. "He was coming. In the room. Mr. Delaney hid. Next to the door. And then he hurt the other – your friend."

As soon as the last rope dropped away from his wrist, Christian launched himself into Gibbs' arms. Startled, he almost tumbled to his side before being able to compensate for the extra weight. Wrapping his arms around the boy on instinct, the agent noted the feverish skin and the constant tremors that made his own blood boil. The ability for any human being to treat a child as poorly as Christian had so obviously been over the past days was incomprehensible to the man. He could feel the small fingers that fisted into his jacket and carded his own weathered digits through the blond hair before pressing for DiNozzo's whereabouts once more.

Christian buried his face in his paladin's neck and whispered, "Mr. Delaney fought with him and hurt him. Then he left him there and went out the other door."

Gibbs followed the shaking finger as it pointed to the door he'd fought so hard to shove open before. Sticking out from behind the heavy door was an expensive dress shoe – some brand name that he could hear DiNozzo bragging about in his head. Gibbs was moving even as he bit down on the string of expletives that came quickly to mind. The young detective could find more trouble than a roomful of probies.

The door slid shut far more easily than it had opened now that there was no resistance to work against. With Christian's sobs abating in his ear, Gibbs caught the first look at his agent. Crumpled in a heap on the floor, Gibbs could see the gash on the side of Tony's head that looked as if it was bleeding far too slowly for that type of head wound. The young man's face was pale and his eyes were shut, but what caught the team lead's eyes was how odd his lips looked. In the gleam of the fire's glow, something looked so off that it had Gibbs dropping to his knees even as he shifted the boy to free up one hand. The angle Tony had fallen at had already tilted his head back. Fingers ghosted over Tony's lips to check for breath and then immediately checked for a pulse. He had no time to waste on rescue breaths now. He needed to know how badly off his agent was. Fear tore at his gut as there was no movement under his fingers. Delaney may not have had enough time to finish the job, but he'd had enough to start DiNozzo down the last path he'd ever take if Gibbs hadn't found him – if Gibbs couldn't save him now.

What the hell was he going to do? He had to get Christian out. And the boy was almost listless against his chest. He needed to get Tony out. But it wasn't going to be easy getting down three flights of stairs. And DiNozzo didn't have the amount of time it would take Gibbs to get Christian out and come back to wait for air.

But they couldn't stay there. Flames were already licking at the room and more than anything, they needed to _move_.

What was he going to do?

**-TBC-**


	3. Triage

**Chapter 3 – Triage **

Gibbs was sure that a lifetime had passed between dropping to his knees and realizing that there really was no pulse beating beneath his fingers. He shifted the digits slightly on DiNozzo's neck just to make sure, but it was becoming painfully obvious that the younger man's heart wasn't beating. Gibbs took half a second and violently pulled Tony by the shoulders until he was flat on his back. His hands had traced their way up DiNozzo's sternum before his mind registered letting Christian stand on his own two feet, giving the first two rescue breaths, or even moving to a more accessible point between the young man's shoulder and hip.

The feel of Tony's chest compressing under his palms was so disturbing to Gibbs' sense of normalcy that he found himself getting inexplicably angry with Ducky. So many hours had been spent practicing on the "Annie" manikins and not once had the doctor warned him that putting his weight behind compressing the plastic, rubber, and the stiff metal spring would be far easier – and yet more difficult at the same time – and feel far, _far_ different than actually performing CPR on tissue and bone. Right now, Gibbs would do anything to keep his mind off the fact that DiNozzo was technically dead beneath his palms.

_Fifteen to two if it's someone like you_…the sing-song voice of Abby's mantra kept repeating in his head as he shifted to quickly force air into DiNozzo's lungs again. He'd moved back to compressions once more when the rest of the catch-phrase worked its way through his thoughts.

_Five to one for a little one._ Gibbs almost stopped the repetitive motion as the image of a child forced itself to the forefront again. The man's head whipped around, even as he continued pressing down on Tony's sternum, just in time to see Christian slide down the wall to his own crumpled heap – tear stains tracking down to soak the bandana across his mouth. The little boy's head lolled to one side and the light of the flames danced in his dark and dilated pupils as he stared apathetically at his would-be rescuers. It brought back with alarming clarity just how bad of a situation they were all still in – as if DiNozzo's untimely death wasn't enough.

The old factory had gone up more quickly than Gibbs had expected, and he could no longer risk Christian _or_ Tony by remaining in the upstairs office. He finished out the cycle of CPR as he looked back and forth between his agent and the seven-year old. DiNozzo was the priority by triage rules – his ABC's were compromised, but he couldn't have been down for more than a few minutes; however, Christian was the priority in the mission. It only took a split second to make the decision, but every agonizing second was costing both DiNozzo and Christian precious time.

Gibbs pulled Tony over one shoulder and pushed himself up off the ground, shifting the unresisting body against him until he had a good grip on Tony's thighs. Gangly arms were swinging limply against his back as he stood fully upright. The agent staggered forward a step until he got his balance and grabbed Christian's arm. It was easy to pull the boy to his feet, but keeping him standing until Gibbs could lift him up was a different story. It took three tries and was worrying at the older man's already paper-thin patience before he had both of his charges secure against his shoulders.

Ducky's lectures echoed in his ears as he took the first tentative steps to the door. He _knew_ that if DiNozzo were to have half a chance, he needed to keep performing CPR. He _knew_ that the longer DiNozzo went without oxygen to his brain, the less likely it was that he'd be able to function as a field agent – hell, the less likely it was that he'd even make it to the hospital. He also _knew_ that they had to move, and now.

The flames had traveled on in search of more fuel and the hallway was now dark with smoke that filled Gibbs' lungs and made him want to duck his head, cover his mouth, or do anything to relieve the oppressive sensation from the thick air. He had no time to worry about himself, however, and pushed past the annoyance to focus on getting to the stairway without falling. Once he was there, he could stop for a moment and get back to keeping DiNozzo from a hero's funeral. If it were up to him, Gibbs mused as he avoided tripping over some unknown debris under his feet, it would be a long time before he saw another funeral.

Shutting the door to the stairway may not have _actually_ cut down on the amount of smoke that followed him into the landing, but it was enough to let him _feel like_ it did. Gibbs didn't pause long enough to think on it and was sinking down to his knees before the thought had even crossed his mind. DiNozzo had already gone without oxygen for too long in Gibbs' opinion, and he needed to take the time to rectify that. Christian drew his knees to his chest as he leaned back against the wall, watching wide-eyed as Gibbs took care to keep Tony's head from smacking into the hard floor.

Gibbs eased Tony's head back until he was sure the airway was open and saw the way his own hand trembled against the pale forehead. He shut his eyes for only an instant before he pinched DiNozzo's nose shut and sealed his mouth around Tony's slack lips. Two quick breaths came almost on instinct and were accompanied by the reassuring sight of DiNozzo's chest rising. The suddenly overwhelming taste of soot and sweat invaded his senses as he leaned back to find the bottom of the already abused ribcage and traced his hand up onto the sternum once more.

"Mister?" Christian's voice was choked with tears and smoke, "why do you keep stopping to kiss your friend?"

Gibbs had just started compressions when the boy's question rolled over him. The absurdity of the innocent question contrasted so starkly with the situation that he could only laugh.

_Don't ask, don't tell; right, Gibbs?_ It was Tony's deadpan voice that echoed in his head in answer and Gibbs wondered when his agent's brand of humor had started to creep its way under the brick walls that Shannon and Kelly's deaths had built.

"You do what you have to, Chris." It wasn't an answer, but it was all he could come up with as he leaned down to breathe for Tony again. Never leave a man behind – Gibbs had that motto tattooed indelibly on his soul, and he wasn't about to let DiNozzo change that.

With his fingers intertwined, Gibbs leaned into the compressions and counted silently in his head. The older man prided himself on having a cast iron stomach, but the combination of the taste in his mouth and the sudden and shockingly clear image of ribs bending and popping back to normal like elastics had him tasting bile. Gibbs had broken enough bones in his life – his own and others' – that he knew the picture in his head was more cartoon than actuality, but it didn't change what he was imagining.

DiNozzo's ribs felt like that – like they were bowing out and made of pliable rubber instead of calcium and marrow. It didn't make it any easier to continue beating on Tony's chest, but it wasn't like Gibbs had the option to stop, either. The Marine was all too aware that he was the only thing that stood between Tony and the permanent and absolute certainty of death. If he stopped, there wasn't even the hint of a hope that DiNozzo would make it out of this. He was the last line of defense against whatever did or didn't await Tony after death. Gibbs had once contemplated making that journey before his time, but he'd be damned if he'd let DiNozzo make it now. Regardless, it was more than the older man wanted to think about at the moment as he alternated between breathing and compressions for another full minute without thinking.

Gibbs knew from the first time he'd shipped overseas with his Corps unit that he would be responsible for men's lives – and had seen more than his share of death in fifteen years of missions. But to realize that his ability to breathe air into Tony's lungs and pump blood through his arteries was the end-all and be-all keeping DiNozzo's chances afloat? That was weighing down on his shoulders more heavily than any pack or rifle ever had. He could physically feel the pressure between his shoulder blades pressing down on him as he breathed for the young man at his knees again.

Christian's coughing broke through the almost unconscious pattern that Gibbs had let himself get lost in – fifteen compressions, two breaths, fifteen compressions, two breaths – and reminded him that they still weren't safe yet. They needed to get down another set of stairs and closer to the exit. If Gibbs thought for a second that the boy could make it out on his own, he'd have sent him running. As it was, he could only pray that the call to dispatch earlier had led to a priority call-out and that rescue crews were close to the scene. He wasn't naïve enough to think that it would be all his doing that would see DiNozzo through this. Gibbs needed help – and the sooner the better.

A quick check of DiNozzo's pulse point proved that the CPR hadn't worked miracles and the older man made the decision to move again. Gibbs shifted and pulled DiNozzo over his shoulder once more, grimacing as the man seemed even heavier this time. The young ex-cop may not look it, but he more than made up for his almost-lanky features with muscle mass – a definite advantage in a fight or chasing down a suspect, but a definite disadvantage to the man trying to save his life now.

As he reached for Christian again, Gibbs was thankful to see the boy struggling to his feet, fighting against the smoke inhalation that was trying to send him into unconsciousness. The boy gripped Gibbs' collar and buried his head into the man's shoulder, tears running down his face as terror sought to overtake him. It had been a hell of a couple days for the seven-year old and Gibbs could feel every tremor that shot through Christian.

Gibbs leaned against the wall as he took the first flight of stairs, using his shoulder to aid his balance as he tried to rush down the steps. Twice he almost stumbled and sent both Tony and Christian tumbling, but sheer will and determination held him upright until he reached the next landing. It had taken longer than he'd thought to get down this one flight of stairs and he needed the break as badly as DiNozzo needed oxygen. Breathing heavily and biting back the coughing fit that wanted to erupt from his chest and light up aches he was pointedly ignoring, Gibbs concentrated on his charges rather than his own well-being. He could deal with any fallout later.

Christian's wide eyes cut through Gibbs like a knife as he realized there was no way to shield the boy from watching DiNozzo dying in front of him. He clamped down on that thought as quickly as he could, reaching to tilt his partner's head back and clear the airway even as he heard Abby's voice chastising him for the negative thought. Tony would _not_ die on him here – he hadn't given the young man permission to do so, and he'd be damned if one of his agents defied that. Especially while there was still anything that Gibbs could do about it.

He could hear the fire tearing through the building and knew that their time was running out. He breathed a quick breath into DiNozzo's mouth and balked when he didn't see the chest rising in tandem. Tony hadn't been choking on anything before…Gibbs acted on instinct born from too many years of CPR certification and had re-tilted the head and tried the breath again before he could even begin to contemplate what might have happened to DiNozzo's airway.

Thankfully, he didn't have to as a shot of short-lived relief rushed through him at seeing Tony's chest rise and fall. He moved to start compressions once more and was startled almost into stopping when a loud crash reverberated through the stairway. It sounded like the building was starting to give up the fight against collapse and fear shooting through his gut urged Gibbs to work that much harder to try and restart Tony's still heart. Images of too many cadavers laid open on Ducky's autopsy table assaulted his memories. He could imagine what Tony would look like with a traditional Y-cut incision across his chest and his heart lying in the scale for Ducky's notes. Bright lights and maybe a sheet would be the only thing keeping Tony from being exposed to all of NCIS.

Gibbs wouldn't let it happen. He pushed the thoughts away and pounded down on DiNozzo's chest again, finishing out the cycle by breathing two quick, hard breaths into Tony's lungs. He was more determined to save Tony's life now than he had been and wouldn't let himself think about the alternative. As he beat out the staccato rhythm of compressions again, he looked over to Christian, making sure that the boy was still with him. If Christian were to pass out, things would go to hell in a hand basket very quickly. FUBAR wouldn't be adequate enough to explain the situation he would be in if _that_ happened.

He had just sealed his mouth over DiNozzo's when it happened. Gibbs had no warning before his mouth was filled with bile and half-digested food and he was gagging himself. He took an instinctual minute to spit before he realized that unresponsive as he was, DiNozzo would have no gag reflex and could asphyxiate on his own vomit. Rolling Tony onto his side, Gibbs didn't pause before clearing the young man's mouth as best he could to clear the airway once more. As he lowered DiNozzo back to the ground and moved to check a pulse, he heard Christian's quiet voice. It didn't take much for Gibbs to hear the smile in the boy's words and knew that he would be the one to wipe it away.

"So, he's okay now, right?" The words were garbled in excitement and muffled by the bandana. "He threw up, so he's gonna be all right now?"

The seven-year old's eyes were bright with hope. Gibbs didn't have time to let him down gently.

"No, Bud. He's not." Tony's carotid artery was still silent beneath the pads of his fingers, and the older man was beginning to lose hope. He blew out a breath to renew his determination and set out to work Tony's heart for him again. _One more set,_ he told himself. Then he'd have to move again. They still needed to get out.

Tony was still motionless and gray when Gibbs finished out another cycle and it was getting harder and harder not to think he was going to stay that way. There were only so many times that rechecking a pulse only to find that the CPR still hadn't worked could be ignored. Only so many times that a person could be someone else's heart and lungs and not start to believe that death was inevitable. Gibbs was starting to respond to the lack of pulse almost by rote, and it was wearing him thin. It was with all of this weighing down on him that he staggered to his feet once more, pulling the lifeless man at his knees with him. Quitting was not in Leroy Jethro Gibbs' character, but DiNozzo's penchant for trouble seemed to have caught up with him and the older man was stretching his own tenacity to the limit.

With both Christian and Tony settled on his shoulders again, Gibbs bit back a grimace as his knees and his back protested against the added weight. His own breaths were short and labored, and sweat was pouring out of every pore conceivable as he leaned his shoulder against the wall again to begin his descent. The older man could feel his heart pounding in his chest as the adrenaline, heat, and strain made his blood pressure skyrocket and his pulse quicken in response. Guilt took hold of him as he took the first stairs – his own heart was working just fine and it reminded him of just how dire Tony's situation was with every beat. He'd give anything at the moment to have DiNozzo quoting lines from _Backdraft_ or at the very least to have the breath to attempt to speak. Hell, at this point Gibbs would take some color in the young man's cheeks. The bloodless face that he had to see every time he moved in to give rescue breaths was harder than almost anything he'd ever had to look at before – with only Shannon and Kelly's grave markers giving the image a run for its money.

He was two steps from the landing when he lost his balance. He'd overshot a stair and the heel of his shoe had caught on the lip of the step. Gibbs crashed to his knees and only by throwing his weight backwards was he able to keep Tony or Christian from being hurt. His back pulled and shooting pain raced through him, but the Marine didn't have the time to waste on it. Christian's screech echoed in his ears harshly and the boy's forehead dug into Gibbs' neck as he braced against the swift change in position. Gibbs fought to control his own tremors as he set the boy down and then lay DiNozzo on his back. That had been too close.

Gibbs didn't bother checking DiNozzo's pulse before starting CPR this time around. Ducky probably would have had his head if he'd known, but the agent wasn't sure it mattered and he wasn't sure he could face feeling the pulseless skin again. He simply began breathing for Tony and prayed to a God he wasn't always sure he believed in that everything would turn out all right.

Gibbs found himself remembering the first time he'd seen DiNozzo in Baltimore – how he'd rebelled against the young detective's carefree attitude and seemingly out of place humor until they'd gotten into the thick of the investigation and Tony's masks had become translucent. He remembered that it hadn't taken long to see the talent that was being wasted on the police force and started making plans to lure DiNozzo to NCIS. Admittedly it hadn't been hard. He found himself almost smiling at the way Tony had jumped at the chance – until Christian's soft words pulled him back to the present.

"He's not getting better. Is he?" Even the seven-year old seemed to have lost hope in Gibbs' efforts as time marched on unaware that every second that sped by was doing so too quickly. Gibbs' half-smile from the memory was wiped clean from his face and tears threatened to fall instead. Damn it, he'd come too far to lose the young man now. He'd never lost an agent, and he sure as hell wasn't going to start now. DiNozzo was _not _going to ruin that record on him – he cared too much about the young man to let him give up.

Gibbs shook his head violently as he renewed his efforts to pull Tony back from the brink. If it meant marching into the afterlife and head smacking DiNozzo back to the land of the living, Gibbs would find a way to do that. He wasn't giving up and he was prepared to match his stubborn streak against DiNozzo's. One way or another, Tony wasn't dying on him. Not here. Not now.

Gibbs could feel the strain in his muscles as he compressed Tony's chest and resolutely ignored the pounding of his own heart as adrenaline continued to course through his veins. His arms were beginning to tremble with each thrust and it only served to fuel Gibbs' determination even more. He poured more strength into each compression to assure that he was doing enough to pump blood to Tony's brain. He wouldn't lose DiNozzo because he hadn't been strong enough.

The sickening sound of ribs cracking flooded Gibbs' ears and the image of bone splintering like fragile glass assaulted his vision. The abuse to Tony's ribcage had finally exceeded the bones' ability to rebound and the calcium and marrow had failed right beneath the heel of his right palm. The sharp feeling had reverberated up his arms until the older man had to bite back a temptation to check his hand for bone shards. He knew better than to stop and had to push back the bile with every continued compression as the ends of the bone grated against each other under his palm. Each time the bones shifted he was rewarded with the tactile impression of exactly what he was doing to DiNozzo to keep him alive.

"Mister, what did you _do_ to him?" Christian's voice was in his ear and sounded to Gibbs like more condemnation than he could handle. He shut his eyes against the tears and ignored the self-accusations running rampant in his head as he completed the cycle and forced himself to keep going. He couldn't answer the boy.

Gibbs breath was catching in his chest with every puff of air that he forced into Tony's mouth. The smoke was taking its toll on him and he couldn't afford to keep subjecting Christian's lungs to the toxins in the air. The muscles in his arms were shaking with exhaustion, and he wasn't entirely sure that he'd be able to lift DiNozzo over his shoulder again to make it down the last flight of stairs. Not and carry Christian at the same time. The seven-year old may be downright scrawny for his age, but he was still added weight and Gibbs wasn't as young as he used to be.

_Damn it, DiNozzo. Don't do this to me._ He reached to check for a pulse again only to nearly succumb to a heart attack himself.

A heavily gloved hand landed on his shoulder and directed Gibbs' attention momentarily away from his agent. The senior agent thought he would collapse in relief as he took in the black and gold turnout gear and the oxygen mask that covered the firefighter's face. As much as it violated his most basic instincts to relinquish control of his agent over to someone else, he was standing up and grabbing for Christian before he'd even registered that he'd gotten to his feet. The little boy was grabbing listlessly at the collar of Gibbs' shirt as he buried his face in his savior's neck. Despite yearly presentations at the boy's school, the sight of the fireman was still frightening.

Gibbs could relate to what the boy was feeling. He hadn't had a chance to really stop and think about how helpless DiNozzo was in the all-out adrenaline rush that had been consuming him since before Delaney had jumped him. Now, however, the sight of DiNozzo's head bouncing around helplessly, violently, and unforgiving against the firefighter's back was enough to curl the knot in his stomach into a monkey's fist of fear and dread. He'd lost fellow Marines before, lost more than he wanted to think of in battle. But he was on American soil. And DiNozzo wasn't in the foxholes with him like his brothers in the Corps. But damn it if DiNozzo hadn't wormed his way into Gibbs' heart like every last man in his Marine unit.

Christian's sniffling distracted Gibbs from his musings just long enough to keep him focused on putting one foot in front of the other – at entirely too slow a pace for Gibbs' liking – as they made their way out into the clean air. The sun's glare on the asphalt made him blink rapidly and it seemed like in a single blink DiNozzo had been laid on the ground and his shirt cut away to reveal his bare chest. In the bright afternoon light, Gibbs could finally see just how ashen Tony's skin was. The bluish tinge to his lips contrasted with the bloodless complexion and it looked just so _different_ that the older man was already picturing DiNozzo's funeral. He clamped down on _that_ avenue of thinking as a paramedic jogged up to him carrying a portable oxygen delivery system.

Gibbs tried to hand Christian off to the EMT for evaluation and transport, but the seven-year old had other plans. One hand wrapped itself into the collar of his NCIS jacket as the other fisted in his gray hair so tightly that even years of practiced stoicism couldn't hide the wince. Obviously, the boy wasn't going anywhere without Gibbs until his father showed up.

With his eyes still glued to the medics shaving DiNozzo's chest – _and isn't he going to be pleased about _that_ when he wakes up_ – Gibbs followed the EMT over to the bus. He sat down on the back bumper to give the technician access to Christian while still keeping an eye on Tony. His eyes closed in an incomprehensible combination of stark fear and utter relief as he saw the adhesive pads from the defibrillator being applied to the young man's chest. There was fear for what they represented in terms of Tony's condition, but relief as Ducky's voice broke through his thoughts – _CPR doesn't save people, Jethro. AED's do._ He was unaware of anything else going on around him – including the placement of a nonrebreather mask over his own mouth – as the mechanical voice of the defibrillator carried on the breeze.

"Analyzing rhythm. Stand clear."

Gibbs could picture Abby making a big show out of demonstrating her skills in Autopsy the last time she had re-certified. "I'm clear, you're clear. We're all clear. Stand back."

Somehow it didn't seem nearly as funny now.

He saw the medics seem to shrink back as the button was pushed to deliver a shock. The way Tony's body arched off the ground cut Gibbs to the core and he found that he was gripping Christian tightly to his chest as Kelly once had with her beloved stuffed bear after a nightmare. Tears pricked at his eyes as the shock of watching the paramedics return to performing CPR as one ran for a backboard and go-bag nearly floored him. He knew better than to believe the movies – one shock wasn't necessarily going to be enough. But damn it if he hadn't held some ridiculous fantasy where Tony would sit up and grace him with one of his trademark grins and ask what all the fuss was about before riding off into the sunset with the girl on his arm.

Christian was pulling away now, trying to see what had caught Gibbs' attention, but the older man held the boy's head down. If _his_ rock-solid nerves with years of Marine training and numerous crime scenes couldn't handle this, how could a small child? He was torn. If he continued to sit there, Christian might end up seeing Tony's last moments. But if he climbed into the ambulance and brought the boy to the hospital and inevitably his father, Gibbs might _miss_ Tony's last moments. And he couldn't handle that.

Something was injected into Tony's IV – _and when had they had time to do that _ – and the AED advised the paramedics that a second shock was warranted. This time, when Tony's back arched off of the ground in response to the electric current coursing through him, the older man had to shut his eyes against the looks of failure that he was sure would be in the paramedics' faces.

It was only when he heard a weak coughing that couldn't have come from anyone but Tony that he opened his eyes hesitantly. There was still a flurry of movement around Tony's supine body, but there was no trace of anyone doing CPR, and the tones of voices were far less guarded.

Gibbs was on his feet and pulling the mask off of his face while grabbing the canister of oxygen attached to Christian's. If the boy wouldn't let go of him, then Gibbs would just have to carry him over to see DiNozzo himself. The color in Tony's face was still far from normal, but glazed over green eyes searched for and met his own worried gaze.

The tears that had been pricking at the corners of his eyes now slid down and mixed with the soot on his cheeks, but Gibbs would never admit to them. He cracked a hesitant smile as DiNozzo broke the stare down to track over Christian in askance of the boy's status.

"He's good, DiNozzo. Just worry about you right now." The words were whisper-quiet as Gibbs wasn't sure he could manage anything louder without his voice cracking.

"I'm…fine, Boss. Good to go." Tony's own whispered words were hoarse and muffled around the oxygen mask that had been firmly secured as soon as he'd started breathing on his own, but they were music to Gibbs' ears.

"'Fine?'" Gibbs was caught between anger and incredulity.

"'Fine'! You think you're…'fine'?" His voice rose in disbelief as the day's events started to catch up with him. _You were dead, Tony! Dead. As in your heart stopped. As in I had to carry your ass down three flights of stairs doing CPR to keep you from staying dead. I don't think that constitutes 'fine' in any sense of the word._ None of his rant made it past clamped lips, but echoed in his brain nonetheless.

Tony's trademark grin untied the knot in Gibbs's gut and settled the older man's nerves as his agent was loaded into the ambulance. With Christian in his arms, Gibbs didn't even hesitate to follow.

**-TBC-**

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**So the rather large part of my brain that is a medical professional 24/7 cringed a little at the end here – but the author in me claimed creative license for the time being. For any other members of the medical profession who are likewise cringing, trust me, Tony isn't quite out of the woods yet and this isn't some miracle cure, but rather a shot of adrenaline that's going to quickly fizzle.**

**Also, for those of you who noticed the discrepancy between current CPR protocols and Gibbs' ministrations, or for those of you who have no idea about CPR other than what you've seen on TV, remember that this story is set somewhere around early 2002. Current American Red Cross protocol for lay rescuer or professional rescuer CPR is 30 compressions to 2 breaths for everyone. Just, as an FYI.**

**Next week's chapter will be the last one, so I just wanted to thank everyone in advance for reading along. I know it's been a long time since I posted anything, and even longer since my last NCIS story before this, but it was great to see so many people still following my stories.**


	4. Advanced Level Support

**Okay, so somehow Saturday turned into Sunday and then Sunday turned into Wednesday, and this managed to fall to the back burner with everything that happened last week out here. Needless to say, it's nice to get back to some form of normal, just in time for this story to be complete. Hope you all enjoy it, and the next time you get a chance, thank a first responder for everything that they do. It's not always an easy job, but someone's got to do it.**

**Without further delay, here is - finally - the last chapter of Emergency Response.**

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**Chapter 4 – Advanced Level Support **

If Gibbs thought that their troubles were over when his agent had woken up briefly on the asphalt, he was sorely mistaken. Buckles had been quickly clicked into place across Tony's chest, hips, and legs; the young man was lifted onto a stretcher before Gibbs could even process that they were moving. Shock, blood loss, pain, and coming back from the dead had combined to sap whatever strength DiNozzo had left in his reserve and threatened to pull him back down to unconsciousness. As the doors to the bus shut and the engine started, Christian had turned his head enough to watch what was happening to Tony.

The medics had heartily suggested that Christian ride in front where the seat had a belt, but the boy had been significantly revived by the oxygen and his grip on Gibbs' hair – which had been painful enough on scene – had only intensified. It was a safe bet that he was going to be missing quite a few of those hairs before Christian was back in his father's arms. Tony's condition had pre-empted a lengthy debate with the EMT's, and when the boy showed no signs of giving up his personal security blanket-slash-hero and Gibbs had simply sat them both in the back of the rig, they'd ignored protocol over the severity of the situation. It briefly crossed Gibbs' mind that they hadn't even attempted to pry _him_ from his agent's side.

Now, Gibbs was sitting by DiNozzo's head trying not to listen to the medical babble being relayed over the radio – his aching head could only take so much abuse. He wasn't sure whether or not he'd be better off at the moment with Ducky sitting next to him translating what was being divulged about Tony's condition. Ignorance was bliss in most cases, but the pallor of his agent's skin coupled with the blood that stained through the gauze taped to his temple was making Gibbs itch with the need for good old fashioned English updates. Blood pressure readings and pulse and respiration rates meant little to the Marine, and he concentrated more on the tone in which the numbers were delivered. There was a calm, detached cadence to the young man's voice, but years of interrogating suspects allowed Gibbs to hear the urgency behind the professionalism. It was enough to set the older man teetering more precariously on the edge of his own level of patience – or lack thereof at the moment. Heaven help the EMT – who looked like he should still be in high school – if he didn't start giving Gibbs some answers within the next few minutes.

Some semblance of self-preservation must have filtered through the kid's focus on his patient, and he offered up a smile and a quick, "this is all to be expected, sir," before applying another square of gauze to the growing stack already pressing down on Tony's temple.

Gibbs didn't have the energy to scowl at being called "sir". Instead, he just nodded and turned his gaze to where he was still holding Tony's hand. He was sure that DiNozzo would have some kind of sarcastic comment about getting in touch with his feminine side at the gesture, some quote from yet another film the taciturn agent had never bothered to watch – or wouldn't admit to if he had, indeed, sat through it at one time or another. It didn't matter; Gibbs simply didn't care at the moment if he was acting out of character. The only movie that was coming to mind at the moment was one of Diane's favorites, _Backdraft,_ and Gibbs remembered the ending well enough to not want to draw on the similarities at the moment. "_You go; we go_" had more meaning today than it ever had in the comfort of his own home.

Tony's eyes kept fluttering and Gibbs wondered if it was selfish of him to hope that the young man would fight his way back to consciousness. He could have hoped for alert, but the momentary glimpse of clarity on scene had quickly faded into a shock induced haze that volleyed back and forth between inane babble and eerie silence. Even Christian seemed to tense when DiNozzo trailed off – as if each time might be the last. Neither one of them needed to be a medical genius to understand that the young man on the stretcher was still dangerously close to not making it to the hospital – despite the EMT's earlier reassurance.

It was during one of Tony's bouts of semi-conscious muttering that Gibbs started looking anxiously at his watch. He hadn't heard anything about an ETA to the hospital and he couldn't help thinking the sooner the better. Tony was mumbling something about not being eaten by the "dragon bear", whatever that was supposed to be, but it was the barely controlled look of panic in his eyes that had the NCIS agent silently willing the ambulance to move faster. Not many people were privy to the man behind Tony's many masks; Gibbs had been the exception from the beginning. He was sure that the young man floating on a cloud of shock and pain meds had no intention of dropping his masks now. Whatever DiNozzo was imagining, it was a sure bet that it was something better discussed amidst work on the boat and dusty jars of bourbon – alone and in Gibbs' basement. Tony being able to form a coherent thought would be a plus, although Gibbs had worked with less.

Christian squirmed in Gibbs' grasp and mumbled something into the oxygen mask. His eyes were still watery and red, but it seemed the safety of the ambulance set some of his fears at bay.

"What was that, Bud?" Gibbs lifted the mask slightly so he could hear the boy better.

Christian's smile was impish and a hint of mischief was returning to his eyes. He was slowly starting to look more like the boy grinning in his school picture rather than the terrified victim that first Tony and then Gibbs had found.

"Are we there yet?"

The barked laugh that escaped from the agent only managed to make his charge scowl and the EMT jump. Gibbs was about to find out an answer when the sound of worn brakes being engaged reached him. The engine cut out and they were on the move again.

-NCIS-

The relative quiet of the ambulance was long forgotten as Gibbs was efficiently separated from his agent and directed to bring Christian straight back into an exam room in the Emergency Department. Acting _in loco parentis_ for the boy afforded Gibbs the right to remain with his charge until the elder Thompson could be contacted, but it presented him with a division of priorities. Morrow needed to be updated, the Admiral needed to be directed to the hospital, and Gibbs needed to be continually apprised of DiNozzo's status. All of this would be infinitely easier without being sequestered in a room painted in colors so bright that they actually hurt Gibbs' eyes. Pediatric examination room or not, the NCIS agent was pretty sure at _least_ one of his ex-wives would have something to say about the ridiculous color scheme.

Regardless, there wasn't much Gibbs could do until someone directed him to an outside line. For the time being, he allowed himself a moment's respite as he settled back against the raised head of the bed and finally took the weight off his beleaguered knees. He really was getting too old for this kind of stuff.

Gibbs was sure he had just gotten Christian settled against his chest and blinked when his shoulder was jostled. The nurse at his side looked as if she weren't much older than the EMT had been, but the soft smile was welcome after the stress of the last two days. Sitting up carefully, Gibbs swung his legs off the bed and stood shakily to his feet.

Christian eyed the woman warily, but finally relinquished his grip on Gibbs' shirt and hair when the agent moved to transfer him to the bed.

"Think you can let the nurse take a look at you now?" Gibbs softly directed the question at Christian, smiling reassuringly at him when the boy nodded his hesitant acquiescence. Bright blue eyes tracked him as the agent backed out of the way.

"Phone?" Gibbs' voice was much more gruff and succinct when aimed at the nurse.

Her timbre of voice didn't change from the soothing tones she used with Christian, but the look she threw at Gibbs was icy at his less than stellar mannerism. Clearly, she didn't appreciate the intricacies of the language known as 'Marine'. "Across from the door. Dial 9 for an outside line."

Gibbs nodded and turned to step away, but thought better of it. "Christian, I'm just going to call your Daddy so he can come get you, all right? You'll be able to see me from the door, and I'll be right back."

The boy's eyes widened at the mention of his father, and he nodded enthusiastically. It was all the prompting Gibbs needed.

-NCIS-

Once in the hallway, Gibbs dug out the business card with Admiral Thompson's personal cell scratched onto the back. Protocol dictated that he report in first, but after the number of times Thompson had called in to Gibbs' and Tony's cell phones, the senior agent felt justified in the breach. Family came first.

The Admiral was understandably choked up at the news, and vowed to meet Gibbs at the hospital as soon as he could get his driver to get them there.

That taken care of, Gibbs dialed in to Morrow's office out of instinct, waited as patiently as he could manage as the director's secretary connected him, and reported in. Unable to give an update on either Christian's or DiNozzo's conditions, the phone call was short. Both calls were completed in a matter of minutes.

The delay was long enough for the young nurse to complete basic triage of her patient and Gibbs stopped her on her way out of the room.

"The doctor will be in to see him shortly, Agent…" her tone was far cooler now that the boy was out of earshot.

"Gibbs. I need to be kept updated on my agent's condition as well. He was brought in with Christian." His tone was no less gruff than before.

"And you need to be cleared too, sir. I'll let the desk know where you are." She was gone before Gibbs could bristle at being called 'sir' for the second time that day or to deny his own need for medical attention.

-NCIS-

Gibbs submitted to the ER attending's examination with as much patience as he could muster. Considering the stress of the last two and a half days, the NCIS agent was surprised that the doctor made it out of the room in one piece. The tell-tale red tinge to the younger man's ears spoke to the gruff nature that the Marine employed, but Gibbs didn't give it a second thought. If grown men couldn't handle his level of intensity, well then they didn't deserve to try and waylay him from finding out about DiNozzo.

He heard Christian snicker as the door shut with a hasty click, and gave him a sideways glance. The boy had the sense to look bashful at being caught out, but the smile didn't leave his eyes. With the terror of the past few days fading from his young memory, like any young child, Christian was starting to test the boundaries his temporary protector would set.

"You sure scared him good, Agent Gibbs." The grin leaked into the boy's tone of voice and simultaneously set Gibbs' mind at ease as well as reminded him of a certain agent of his that had no regard for the Marine's standoffish nature.

"Did I, now? Well, I guess…" he didn't get to finish his sentence as Christian started wiggling to get off the bed and let out a high pitched squeal.

"Daddy!"

Gibbs turned from the chair he had been resting in post-examination just in time to see the Admiral scoop his son up tightly into his arms. As the father dropped to his knees with Christian's head buried in his shoulder, Gibbs noticed the tears that were starting to well in the man's eyes. The iron-faced man refused to let them fall, but the relief that emanated from Thompson in waves tempered the stoicism that years in the Navy had drilled into him. The NCIS Agent tried his best to push aside the resentment that crept up on him. He'd shed plenty of tears over the loss of Kelly and Shannon, and couldn't help wondering what it would have been like if he'd been able to hold his daughter one more time.

Corralling Kelly and Shannon back into the vault of memories took a little longer than Gibbs had planned, but when they were safely locked away again, he was able to focus on the reunion in front of him. Christian's voice was picking up in volume and intensity as he told his father all about Tony.

"You should've seen him, Daddy! He came busting through the door just like Superman and beat Mr. Delaney up! Even after he got hurt and _everything_. He scared him so bad that Mr. Delaney had to hide him and run away and then Agent Gibbs came and found us! Then Agent Gibbs had to kiss him and make him better so the firemen could get us all out. They took him someplace else when we got here, though. Can we go see him, Daddy? I wanna ask him if he can come to show and tell with me at school. The other kids will think he's the coolest. Can we? _Please_?"

Thompson would probably have given Christian the world if only he'd asked, but the Admiral was having trouble keeping up with the story. He looked over the boy's shoulder in askance.

"He's talking about Agent DiNozzo. He was hurt rescuing Christian." Whatever else he might have said was aborted when Gibbs caught sight of the ER nurse from earlier approaching them.

"Agent Gibbs?" the nurse had the grace to tone down her own annoyance at their previous encounter. "Agent DiNozzo is awake. If you'll follow me…"

Gibbs didn't look back, even when he heard the boy tell his father to follow along. Christian was taken care of. Now, he had another lost charge to look after.

-NCIS-

DiNozzo looked nothing like the larger than life hero that Christian's story had painted him as. Gibbs imagined the normally cocky agent would be basking in well-earned glory – despite the fact that he'd spent most of the rescue unconscious. The young man _had_ died momentarily, after all. Gibbs figured he'd earned the right to crow a little.

The elder agent sure as hell didn't expect to see Tony looking more and more like a kicked puppy as Admiral Thompson had been falling over himself to thank DiNozzo for bringing his son back to him. Gibbs had kept out of the limelight, not needing the open praise for a job well done. The Admiral had seemed to understand that a handshake and a quiet "thank you" were more than enough for the Marine who had handed his son back to him. The fact that he and DiNozzo were around to see Thompson get to hug his son one more time, to be able to take the boy home and watch him grow up – well, that was enough for Gibbs. His teammate, on the other hand, usually needed the verbal reminder that he'd done well. Up until now, Gibbs had assumed the man just had an insatiable need to be the center of attention – he'd seen it often enough working with him over the past year.

Gibbs knew Tony had his masks, his easy deflections away from his true character. He hadn't pushed too hard in the past, content to know that when it all came to a head, DiNozzo would be right in the thick of things acting every bit the professional and tenacious investigator that he was. Perhaps that needed to change. Clearly, Tony needed to understand where he stood as an agent at NCIS, as a member of Gibbs' team, as a part of the eclectic group that Abby kept referring to as family.

He wisely held his tongue until a now-sleepy Christian called out his last goodbye from where his head rested on the Admiral's shoulder. Gibbs could picture Kelly curled into Shannon's shoulder, complete with a thumb stuck securely in her mouth, and it took him a few minutes to put the lid on those memories. He had present issues to deal with and they came in the form of one Anthony DiNozzo, Jr.

"What is it, DiNozzo?" He kept his tone gruff and nonchalant. One thing he'd picked up fairly quickly was that to show open concern to Tony was tantamount to sending him sprinting in the other direction. What would happen to the young man in his current state, Gibbs wasn't sure, but he wasn't about to tempt fate any more today.

Gibbs expected deflection. He expected a smartass remark or a flippant assurance once again that he was 'fine'. He expected some sort of movie reference or bad attempt at an accent.

But the metaphorical roller coaster that Tony had been on in the past few hours had already bowled through most of his defenses. When he spoke, the words were quiet and resigned. Gibbs wondered how much of that was the smoke-abused trachea or the pain that was being masked through IV medication, and how much was emotional response.

"You shouldn't have done it, Gibbs."

"Done what?" He had a sneaking suspicion as to exactly what Tony was referring to, but before he jumped the gun, Gibbs wanted to see what the young man would say.

Tony sighed and it seemed to Gibbs as though he was shrinking further back into the pillows behind him before he spoke. It was as close to running as the younger man could manage at the moment, and the movement didn't go unnoticed.

"Risked yourself and Christian. He was the priority. You should have gotten him out safely and made sure he was okay."

Gibbs bristled at the matter-of-fact tone that DiNozzo was sporting. _Does he really think so little of himself?_

"Christian is fine. He was fine at the time as well. You were unconscious, not breathing, and had no pulse. Check your ABC's, DiNozzo. That made _you_ the priority." Gibbs didn't think he would need to justify his actions to anyone, least of all his subordinate. Morrow hadn't even questioned his decisions and there had been a two-star Admiral breathing down both their necks at the time.

The look on DiNozzo's face suggested that the fact that the seven-year old had been frightened was enough to make him the priority. He grew wise enough not to comment on _that_ with a perfectly timed and pointed glare from Gibbs. The younger man simply dropped his gaze and turned his head away before he spoke again.

"It shouldn't have gone down like that. I shouldn't even have been a thought. You should have taken Christian and beat it out of there. I mean…"

"DiNozzo." Gibbs' gruff call was ignored.

"Who knows what could have happened. There was no guarantee that you getting me out would have changed things, right Boss?"

"Tony." Exasperation started to tinge the older man's voice.

"You should have just taken Christian and gone. That's it." Tony didn't even sound as if he cared that doing so would have resulted in his death.

"DiNozzo." Enough was enough. Gibbs took a step forward and raised his hand to smack some sense into the back of Tony's head.

"Jethro! I swear if you even _think_ about hitting the back of his head right now, I won't be responsible for my actions." The medical examiner had just walked in the door at that moment.

Gibbs aborted his movement so quickly that it looked as though his hand was attached to a rubber band. He noticed the smirk pull at the corner of Tony's lip and was both grateful to see it and simultaneously annoyed. A quick glare reminded the younger investigator that he should have the good grace to look abashed for the audacity of finding humor at his boss's expense.

"And don't think you're going to get out of a lecture, young man." Ducky turned his quickly melting ire on DiNozzo. "I believe I told you specifically about the dangers of receiving a second blow to the head so soon after the first. You're lucky you didn't cause any permanent damage."

A soft smile directed at Tony assured both Gibbs and DiNozzo that the older man didn't expect anything less given the situation. It didn't mean he hadn't been worried and the best way to remind Tony of that was with the stern concern. After all, trying to talk to Tony about his health was almost as bad as telling Gibbs he should lay off the caffeine.

"Don't you mean any _more_ permanent damage, Duck?" Gibbs' quip was met with a withering look from the older man.

DiNozzo took it all in stride, strengthening his smirk and pulling yet another mask more firmly in place as he responded. "Well, next time I'll make sure to let the raving lunatic know that repeated blows to my head are on your list of 'don'ts'."

Gibbs wasn't entirely sure if Tony was being defensive or sarcastic. Either way, it was pissing him off. He turned to Ducky, and pointed at the door.

"I need the room, Duck."

Ducky didn't move for a moment. "Jethro…" he trailed off, and Gibbs wasn't sure about what would have come out of his mouth next.

"I promise I won't do any permanent harm, yet. Just need to straighten a few things out." The last part of his promise was delivered in a far gruffer tone than he'd intended, but was meant to get the point across. Gibbs waited until Ducky had reluctantly walked out of sight before he turned on his agent again. The glimpses under Tony's masks continued to surprise him today – _was that fear in his eyes?_ It only took an instant for Tony's face to drop back into carefully disguised indifference and Gibbs couldn't be entirely sure he'd actually seen the emotion flash in the green eyes.

He was sure, however, that he saw the almost imperceptible flinch from DiNozzo as Gibbs took a step forward. He stopped in his tracks and lowered the tone of his voice until it sounded soft, even to his own ears. He had spoken to frightened children more forcefully.

"You may think that little of yourself, DiNozzo, but try to remember that the rest of us don't." He deliberately stressed the word 'us' in attempt to reassure Tony that he cared as well. It seemed to settle the young man enough that he risked stepping forward again. When DiNozzo didn't react to the movement, Gibbs dropped down into the uncomfortable plastic chair next to the bed. "You did your job today, and you did a damned fine job of it. Don't think for a second that I don't see that. And to that little boy? And his father? You _were_ a bonafide hero today."

Gibbs expected a non-committal nod. He hoped for acceptance. He should have known better. DiNozzo didn't fit any mold Gibbs tried to carve out for him.

Tony scoffed.

"Yeah, some hero I am. I managed to not only piss off an ex-SEAL and almost get a kid killed, but also managed to _actually_ get _myself_ killed. If you hadn't been around, Christian would be dead and Admiral Thompson would be…" he trailed off with wide eyes before he finished that thought – _be in the same boat as you. Mourning his child's death_.

"He's not, DiNozzo. _You_ found Christian. _You_ distracted Delaney from whatever he was about to do with the boy. Do you think he was in that room to make sure Christian was comfortable? He started a fire. He left his hostage tied to a chair. Delaney was going to kill him, Tony. If it weren't for _you_, Admiral Thompson wouldn't have his son anymore." Gibbs watched him shut down – he could almost see the walls come crashing back into place – and it didn't take Tony's next comment for him to know that he hadn't gotten through to the young man.

"Still think you should've gotten the kid out first and then come back for me…if it was safe." Tony's voice was quiet and the air of defeat in his words settled poorly in Gibbs' gut.

His hard-ass Marine stare wasn't getting through. Maybe sarcasm would – God knows DiNozzo had both responded to it and dished it out in the past.

"Couldn't. Christian was kind of persistent about keeping you around. Seemed to think that you're worth it or something."

DiNozzo snorted his opinion of that but Gibbs plowed forward before Tony could even think about speaking.

"And so do I, Anthony." Gibbs' voice was gentle and sincere. He hoped the blunt endorsement would get through. The surprised look on Tony's face seemed to show that it worked. Gibbs wasn't overly surprised though, when it didn't stop Tony from protesting.

"Gibbs. I…"

"Look, DiNozzo. I don't know where you got this hare-brained idea that you're expendable, but if all I'd wanted for a teammate was a tool or a diversion, I'd have left your ass out to dry in Baltimore and gotten Abby to make me a robot."

DiNozzo continued to look downright bashful at the endorsement and tried to cover it with humor. "Yeah, _that_ would have worked. You'd tell it to bust down a door and it'd dance a jig or something."

Gibbs glared. He was sure that Tony was missing the point on purpose. He was sorely tempted to ask if Tony thought his ability to follow orders was any better than this hypothetical robot, but had a nagging feeling that the younger agent would miss the sarcasm right now. He was cut off by Tony's backtracking before he could test out the theory anyway.

"Not that I could do any better with it – has nothing to do with your technology skills, Boss. It would probably shoot me instead."

Gibbs couldn't help it; he snickered. The image of the robot out of the old _Lost in Space_ television series shooting DiNozzo in the foot – or somewhere slightly…higher and more embarrassing – came to mind and ruined the serious idea he'd been trying to beat into Tony's psyche. He could tell that he probably wasn't going to get through Tony's thick skull with words any time soon. He'd just have to keep it in mind to show him.

"Keep it up, DiNozzo. You keep trying to convince me you're not worth it and next time maybe I'll listen." There was a hint of humor in the sardonic rebuke. Gibbs kept his tone light as he continued. They both needed the comic relief right now. "Jesus, I thought you were a pain when you're conscious, but you're an absolute nightmare as dead weight."

Gibbs blanched suddenly as the absolute severity of his words nearly floored him. He'd come so close to losing DiNozzo just hours before. He didn't even have to concentrate to picture what Tony's face had looked like as he lay clinically dead in the stairwell each time Gibbs restarted CPR. He didn't have to imagine what the young man would look like on Ducky's autopsy table. He'd seen it through the smoke and haze. All kidding aside, Gibbs was damned lucky that the worst thing that had come from today was a pro forma investigation into Delaney's death and Morrow's insistence that he pick up another team member. It could have been so much worse.

And DiNozzo wanted him to take that all with a grain of salt and throw it aside? For something as trivial as his own health? If he was going to keep the younger investigator around, Gibbs had to make Tony realize _exactly_ where he stood on leaving people behind. When he spoke again, his words were strained with a level of conviction that he hadn't realized he was still capable of. His tone was soft and determined, as if nothing he had said to DiNozzo before had ever held this much importance.

"You listen; and you listen good, DiNozzo. Because I'm only going to say this once." Gibbs waited until Tony's eyes met his and his quirky smile stilled. The younger man's face was still too pale underneath the bruises and gauze for Gibbs' liking, but there was at least some color replacing the gray visage that was permanently etched into the Marine's brain. When he was sure that Tony was paying complete attention, he continued in the same quiet tone.

"I don't care what the situation turns into or what kind of reasoning you or _anyone else_ may have. You're a member of my team now and it's going to stay that way for a good long time if I have anything to say about it." Gibbs paused to make sure there was no way DiNozzo could doubt him. "It will be a cold day in _Hell_ before I leave you behind anywhere, Anthony. You got me?"

He could see that Tony wanted to protest. Gibbs could read the emotions playing across the younger man's face – Tony clearly wanted to get through to Gibbs that he wasn't worth all that. That no one had ever been that insistent on his survival before. Ever. But the hard stare and the depth of compassion in Gibbs' steely gaze were cutting to the quick. If Gibbs had to put a label on the tone he was using, it would have to be resolute – or maybe even as far as grave. No one could mount a defense against that level of sincerity. So the Marine watched as Tony did the only thing he possibly could – the one thing that Gibbs was laying all of his chips down on.

Tony believed him.

"Gotcha, Boss."

FINI


End file.
